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HAZUS Methodology:
Earthquake
Wind
Flood
Coastal |
Wind Methodology
HAZUS is a nationally applicable methodology and software program for estimating potential losses from earthquakes, floods, and hurricane winds. HAZUS is being developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under contract with the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), who maintains a committee of wind engineering experts to provide technical oversight and guidance to the wind model development project. Applied Research Associates, Inc., is the technical subcontractor developing the model.
Hurricane Model
The Hurricane Model of HAZUS was released in early 2003 as part of a mulithazard version of HAZUS. The model allows users in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions of the U.S to estimate hurricane winds and potential damage and loss to residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. It also allows users to estimate direct economic loss, post-storm shelter needs, and building and tree debris quantities.
The hazard component of the HAZUS Hurricane Model makes use of an existing state-of-the-art windfield model, which has been calibrated and validated using full-scale hurricane data. The model incorporates sea surface temperature in the boundary layer analysis, and calculates wind speed as a function of central pressure, translation speed, and surface roughness. The wind speeds are used to estimate the forces on buildings and facilities and to calculate potential damage and loss.
Multihazard Inventory Tools
The Comprehensive Data Management System (CDMS) and the Building Inventory Tool (BIT) include capabilities for mulithazard data collection. CDMS assists users with collecting and managing local building data for more refined analyses than are possible with the national level data sets that come with HAZUS.
The HAZUS Hurricane Model is an improvement over existing loss estimation models by using a wind hazard-load-damage-loss framework. The model addresses wind borne debris, progressive failure, and the effects of rain entering the building, and has the following features:
- A building classification system based on the building envelope and frame.
- Capability to compute damages for residential, commercial, and industrial buildings.
- Capability to compute damage to building components, contents, and interior.
- Capability to estimate tree and building debris quantities and post-storm shelter needs.
- Ability to estimate direct economic loss due to damaged buildings.
- Ability to assess affect of mitigation actions such as shutters or improved roof connections.
Current Development
Development is continuing on the HAZUS Hurricane Model to add capability for estimating losses from storm surge, impacts to lifelines and agriculture, indirect economic losses, improved performance in terms of speed and accuracy, and to continue essential coordination with changes to ArcGIS. A new maintenance release, HAZUS-MH MR3, was recently issued by FEMA.
User Support
Technical support is available to users over the phone and fax and through email. FEMA also sponsors training and many local HAZUS User Groups (HUGS) are sources of support.
The figure below shows the elements of the Hurricane Model.
Summary
The Hurricane Model allows users to
- formulate and evaluate policy programs to reduce wind loss, including general mitigation strategies;
- estimate required resources for disaster relief;
- improve emergency response planning through scenario analysis;
- plan response and recovery efforts following hurricanes;
- plan for debris removal following hurricanes;
- estimate displaced households and post-storm shelter requirements; and
- conduct multiple levels of analysis with national level data as well as user and expert- supplied data.
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